Writing your autobiography made easy

Learning specialist Wendy Butcher (pictured) is running a whole range of workshops in New Zealand Book Month 2007 part of the work she carries out for the library learning centres.

From school holiday programmes where students make their own music and CD cover; to classes on online auctions or making movies of your holidays, the classes focus on applied uses of technology.

The idea is that it has a link back to using information it’s the same for beginner computing they can actually use information better, she says.

The Writing your Autobiography workshop is based on the Next in Line programme, originally developed by Armiger Jagoe of the United States. The workshops a run over a series of sessions and people interact with others to discuss why they wanted to write their autobiography. It is designed for older people, rather than younger people, Wendy says. It’s sort of like an oral history, but then people are going to write down what they’ve done. So it’s taking people through very, very easy steps to get them talking about what they want to say about their lives.

People can choose to write about as much or as little of their lives as the like. The idea is that people come along and they’ve got something they want to say about themselves. They’re writing the stories that are relevant to them. If they talk about it (with another person) it makes it easier for them to identify a place to start writing.

A lot of people thing they want to do something like this, but they haven’t got the push in themselves to do it on their own. These (workshops) act as a stepping stone. Some of them end up with big tomes others end up with little packages of stories.

Photos can also be part of the package.
We run programmes at the Learning Centre where people can bring along their photos and they make up a package, like a digital storybook, which will include photos and writing. That’s an expansion on what the autobiography course does this course has a lot more writing.

Structuring the story

People are going to need help with structuring their stories, and a lot of time will be allowed for people to get information into the computer if need be, Wendy says. One of the older men that I had in my beginner computer class, his incentive to come to that was he had been writing his family history. He is very competent and has had a very interesting life. He wanted to put this thing onto the computer so that his children could finish it when he couldn’t any longer. It was taking him a long time but it doesn’t matter.

People start off and they think they’ll learn little things, then they get addicted, Wendy says. The older people keep coming partly because they get some support to do what they are doing but also because they get addicted to it. They get keen, they like it, and that’s cool. And the group they meet up with becomes their support.

There are four writing sessions planned during Book Month (2007), with space for seven writers.

Library tours, internet workshops popular

Tours of the central library will also be popular, Wendy predicts. I’ve run some of these before when various groups have asked for them, and people are blown away at what the central library has. When I run classes for some of the tertiary classes that come in, they think they know everything - they don’t. It’s opens people’s eyes up to lots of the things that are here.

The tours visit the Aotearoa New Zealand Collection, which houses some of the treasures of the library’s collections; view old newspapers (the oldest being 1851); discover how to find music, and visit the Nga Pounamu Māori centre and the research room.

Free internet workshops will amaze customers with the range of available content, Wendy says. The library website has an amazing collection of things on it and a lot of that you can get free in the library, but it’s also accessible from outside. We’re going to show people some of the exciting things that are available you just have to know how to find them.

Safe Computer Games for adults is a workshop where you won’t bring up pictures you don’t want to see, Wendy says. It’s a whole range of things word puzzles, jigsaws, chasing cars, that sort of thing. …
Even if you haven’t got many computer skills you can still come to it, and there will be handouts for each thing.

There are lots of compelling reasons to visit your library during New Zealand Book Month.